ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
First today, the man arrested after apparent assassination attempt on former President Trump has had his first court appearance in Florida. Ryan Routh is being held on two felony firearms charges. In a criminal complaint unsealed today, the FBI says Routh's cellphone records show he arrived at the tree line outside Trump's West Palm Beach golf club at 2 a.m. and waited there until 1:30 in the afternoon, when he was spotted and fired on by a Secret Service agent. NPR's Greg Allen was at the courthouse and joins us from West Palm Beach. Hi, Greg.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: So Routh apparently waited in hiding at Trump's golf club with an SKS-style rifle for nearly 12 hours. What does that tell us?
ALLEN: Well, you know, there have been a lot of questions about how Routh knew Trump would be on the golf course yesterday. The former president's schedule and his whereabouts hadn't been publicly released. And there's a lot about this we don't know yet. But we do know that when he's at Mar-a-Lago, Trump golfs on the weekend at his West Palm Beach golf club quite often. So it does seem possible that Routh may have just shown up and staked out a place where Trump often is expected to be.
SHAPIRO: And this appears to be the second attempt on former President Trump's life in just two months. The Secret Service received a lot of criticism after the first one. Tell us about the role of the Secret Service this time.
ALLEN: Right. Well, you know, in that shooting at the rally in Pennsylvania, in which an audience member was killed, and Trump was wounded, the Secret Service was harshly criticized for missing signals and failing to act quickly. In this case, while Trump was golfing, a Secret Service agent scouted the holes ahead of where he was playing, and when the agent spotted a gun barrel protruding from bushes on the perimeter of the golf course yesterday, he began immediately firing.
That caused the alleged gunman to flee, leaving behind an SKS-style rifle, two backpacks and a GoPro camera mounted on the fence to apparently record the shooting. Police arrested Routh about 45 minutes later as he fled north in his vehicle on Interstate 95. We also learned today that his license plate on the vehicle was from a different car that had been reported stolen.
SHAPIRO: Well, tell us about the first court appearance that he had today.
ALLEN: Yes. Well, he was - you know, he's a slender man with blond hair. He was in court wearing a navy prison jumpsuit and was shackled the whole time he was in court. His demeanor - he was respectful. And as he was questioned by Magistrate Judge Ryon McCabe, he told the judge he has a $3,000 monthly income and owns two trucks in Hawaii but had no other funds or savings. The judge said, well, from what I'm hearing, you have little or no assets, and that he did qualify for a federal public defender. And a public defender was on hand there today representing him.
SHAPIRO: And tell us more about the charges against him.
ALLEN: Well, he hasn't been formally charged yet. An arraignment has been set for September 30, but it's likely we'll see a federal indictment sometime between now and then laying out the charges against him. For now, Routh is being held on two charges, illegal possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and possession of a firearm that had an obliterated serial number. In court today, the federal prosecutor expressed concerns that Routh was a flight risk and a possible threat to the community, and that will all be fleshed out in a pretrial detention hearing set for next week.
SHAPIRO: Well, the FBI's calling this an apparent assassination attempt on Trump. What can you tell us about what Routh's motivations might have been?
ALLEN: Well, you know, he had a long history of run-ins with law enforcement authorities, both in North Carolina and in Hawaii. In North Carolina, he had two felony convictions for illegally possessing a machine gun and for possessing stolen goods. He worked as a roofing contractor. But his political leadings appeared to have been all over the place. On social media, he said he supported Trump in 2016. But he later expressed support for other candidates, including Nikki Haley and Kamala Harris. In fact, records show he voted in the Democratic primary in North Carolina just this past March.
So - but he was most active around the cause of providing support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. The New York Times interviewed him last year about his efforts to recruit people, including former Afghan soldiers to fight in Ukraine. Routh himself didn't have any military experience, but he did say on social media he was willing to fight and die in Ukraine.
SHAPIRO: Just briefly, how has Trump reacted to all of this?
ALLEN: Well, you know, we believe he's still at his private club here in Palm Beach at Mar-a-Lago. He's had only praise for the work of the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies, saying that they were positively outstanding. Today in an interview with Fox News, he laid some of the blame for the attack, though, on President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
SHAPIRO: OK.
ALLEN: He says their charges that he represents a threat to democracy is inflammatory language and is, quote, "causing me to be shot at." Of course, Trump has used inflammatory and racist language himself against immigrants and his own political opponents.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Greg Allen in West Palm Beach, Fla. Thanks.
ALLEN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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